OSMIJEH PUTNIKA/SMILING WANDERER

Jadran Zalokar    review by : Zarko Milenic

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Jadran Zalokar was born 1947, in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Except writing, he is also painting Ph D. He has been published in domestic and foreign magazines for over 20 years. He lives and works in Rijeka, where he teaches about spiritual phenomena of contemporaneity. His haikus are published in several anthologies and in two books "Haiku time machine" (Rijeka, 1997.) and "Vernal haiku" (Rijeka, 1998.).

"Smiling Wanderer" isn't divided in cycles, although it could be, for example, seasons or some motives which are more frequently.

About cats:

My cooled tomcat
moving waveringly between
the earth and the door.

Zalokar describing cats in his haikus, accents their sex. He doesn't describe cats in mating time. But for him and to his readers are important to know, the speech is about his tomcat.

About butterflies:

From nowhere
a green butterfly -
but just for me.

Haiku poet Zalokar, like famous haijin Issa feels strong closeness and connection with animals, even with the smallest ones, well, a green butterfly only for him and for you also, if you can identify with it.

Seagulls are also interesting for Zalokar, like that:

Gull after gull
following a rain
in mountains

Except to seeguls, Zalokar turns even to the swallows, to birds which we often link with countryside, not with the sea. In one Zalokar's haiku we meet the both:

Swallows
towards the gulls - the black
saturated with the white

By the sea, except gulls we can also feel a violent wind, but it mustn't be so bad:

Not wind roaring -
the spring flowers
even more beautiful.

For the end, my favorite haiku:

On the top of cypres,
even with its tail sings
the blackbird.

All these haikus are written in the best tradition of Japanese haikus and illustrated by their author.